Updates: Israel threatens Gaza war restart as Hamas searches for bodies

As families return to what is left of their homes, watch how many Palestinians in Gaza face the deadly threat of unexploded ordnance.

See how an Egyptian team is aiding Hamas in the search for Israeli captives.

Read how an ex-military officer challenged a US report on Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, here.

And for all our coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and the ceasefire process, go here.

This live page will close soon. Here are the day’s major developments:

• The Israeli military said Hamas handed over the body of another deceased captive, as the army’s chief has promised that the war on Gaza will go on until the remains of all abductees are received.
• Gaza’s Health Ministry announced it is opening a new office to work on identifying the bodies of hundreds of Palestinians returned by Israel under the ceasefire with Hamas, with many unrecognisable due to decomposition and mistreatment.
• Two years of war on Gaza has more than doubled the number of people in the enclave who need mental health care, rising from about 485,000 to more than one million, the World Health Organization said.
• Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have surged, with 757 incidents recorded in the first half of 2025, 13 percent more than the same period last year, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
• The UN and France condemned an Israeli attack near UN peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon after international soldiers neutralised an “aggressive” Israeli reconnaissance drone.

Egyptian heavy machinery and teams have been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip to assist in the search for the remains of captives. They can be seen here, digging as Palestinians stand by and watch:

Al Jazeera is reporting from Jordan because it has been banned from Israel and the occupied West Bank. 

This handover of the captive’s remains happened after days of efforts to locate and exhume more bodies in order to return them to Israel.

After today’s handover, there are the remains of 12 Israeli captives still in Gaza. The pace at which this is happening is problematic as far as the Israeli government is concerned. It accuses Hamas of not doing enough; of not handing over bodies fast enough.

At the same time, Israel has allowed Egyptian teams and the International Committee of the Red Cross in to offer help and bring heavy equipment in order to do the digging and searching, because of the extent of the damage, even to search in areas of Gaza now under Israeli military control.

So, for now, the tenuous US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold.

Two brothers were killed in an Israeli air strike on southern Lebanon, bringing the total death toll from such attacks to 13 over the past week.

Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that the two brothers were killed in an Israeli bombing of the village of al-Bayyad in the Tyre district.

The Lebanese official news agency ANI said the two were killed in an attack on a sawmill in al-Bayyad.

Meanwhile, an Israeli army spokesperson said it “eliminated two terrorists from the Hezbollah terrorist organisation while they were working to restore a terrorist infrastructure in southern Lebanon”.

Israel’s air force has stepped up bombings, saying it’s striking members of Hezbollah and its infrastructure, despite an ongoing truce in Lebanon reached in November 2024.

Lebanese leaders have accused Israel of attempting to prevent the reconstruction of the region, devastated by last year’s war, by targeting the machinery, including diggers and bulldozers.

Israeli forces have closed off all access points to Hizma, a Palestinian town northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, the Wafa news agency reports.

The closure has prevented residents from entering or leaving the town, blocking roads in and out of the community. Hizma is located in the occupied West Bank, where the Israeli military frequently restricts Palestinian movement through checkpoints and roadblocks.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel continues to ignore the ruling and has announced plans to annex the West Bank.

A coalition of more than 300 prominent figures – half of them previous contributors to the newspaper – is refusing to write for The New York Times’s opinion section until its demands on Palestine reporting are met.

The group of writers wants the NYT to examine bias against Palestinians in its journalism, withdraw the contested article “Screams Without Words“, and use its editorial influence to advocate for halting US weapons supplies to Israel.

High-profile names backing the campaign include novelists Sally Rooney, Isabella Hammad, Susan Abulhawa and Viet Thanh Nguyen.

“There is nothing appetizing or enlivening about the prospect of sitting across from the likes of Bret Stephens, Thomas Friedman, or David Leonhardt, politely debating the definition of genocide,” their statement said.

Check the full list of people participating here.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says the tenuous truce in the Gaza Strip is positive, but much more needs to be done by Israel for the sake of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children.

“The ceasefire is good news because children aren’t being killed every day, but just a ceasefire doesn’t put children back in school, stop them from starving, or give them access to clean water – the focus of the UNICEF’s activities in the Strip at the moment,” spokesperson Tess Ingram said from Gaza.

There are also preparations under way for the coming winter season and getting education up and running as soon as possible, Ingram told Al Jazeera.

“We really want to get all 650,000 school-aged children back into in-person learning. A proper education will lead to a foundation for a strong Gaza in the future and healing for themselves, their children, and their community.”

But equipment to clean up leftover ordnance and the war’s devastation still needs Israel’s approval.

“To clear rubble, we need to clear unexploded bombs to make sure it’s safe for children to return and, of course, we need to get in the materials which are still being denied,” said Ingram.

Gaza’s population faces the same desperate humanitarian emergency as before the ceasefire began, the head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society has warned.

Younis al-Khatib said that residents are experiencing deep psychological harm and will need mental health care for years to come.

“Rebuilding human beings is more difficult than rebuilding destroyed homes,” he said from Norway.

Grete Herlofson, the head of the Norwegian Red Cross, called Gaza’s circumstances “critical and desperate”, pointing to Israel’s repeated violations of international humanitarian law.

Both organisations said that discussions about reconstructing Gaza cannot begin until there is a lasting ceasefire and aid can move freely into the territory without Israeli restrictions.

The Palestine Red Crescent said that only 21 of its 58 ambulances remain operational because of fuel shortages.

A former United States colonel who worked on a team that compiled a report on the Israeli military’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist and US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh has accused the administration of former US President Joe Biden of softening its findings in favour of Israel.

The statements from Colonel Steve Gabavics in an interview with the New York Times represent the first time a military official involved in the report has spoken publicly.

The officer recounted being “flabbergasted” by a State Department statement that described Abu Akleh’s May 11, 2022, killing as “the result of tragic circumstances”.

At the time Abu Akleh was fatally shot in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, Gabavics had been working at the inter-agency Office of the United States Security Coordinator, which oversees cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces.

Read more here.

According to figures released by the UN’s satellite agency, more than 80 percent of buildings across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed.

Israel’s top military officer says the Gaza conflict will persist until the remains of all captives are received.

Army Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir told commanders the military’s objectives remain incomplete while bodies of fallen captives remain in Gaza, The Times of Israel reported.

“The war is not yet over. We must complete our sacred mission,” Zamir said.

His comments underscored the fragility of the US-brokered truce with Hamas and came during a gathering of the army’s senior leadership.

The United Nations and France have condemned an Israeli attack near UN peacekeeping troops in southern Lebanon after international soldiers neutralised an “aggressive” Israeli reconnaissance drone.

Known as UNIFIL, the UN force works with the Lebanese army to enforce the ceasefire that ended more than a year of war between Hezbollah and Israel. Despite the truce, Israel continues to launch attacks.

“We are very concerned about the incident that occurred on Sunday in which an Israeli drone dropped a grenade in the vicinity of a UNIFIL patrol, and subsequently an Israeli tank fired a shot at the peacekeepers in Kfar Kila in the UNIFIL area of operations,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

“Our colleagues at UNIFIL are in touch with the [Israeli army] to protest vehemently what has happened. It’s not the first time that we feel we’ve been targeted in different ways … [including] pointing lasers or warning shots. It’s very, very dangerous,” he added.

According to a French diplomatic source, the UNIFIL troops involved in Sunday’s incident were French.

“France condemns the Israeli fire that targeted a UNIFIL detachment on October 26, 2025,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “These incidents follow those observed on October 1, 2, and 11, when the Israeli army had already targeted UNIFIL positions.”

Democratic Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman has urged the administration of US President Donald Trump to uphold its commitment to enforce the Gaza ceasefire after reporting that one of her constituents lost 48 family members in Israel’s assault.

“Despite the ‘ceasefire,’ innocent Palestinians continue to be killed,” Watson Coleman wrote on social media.

Sami Shaban, a school board member in New Jersey, has had 48 relatives killed in Israeli attacks during the two-year war, she said.

Most recently, his cousin Sufyan, his wife, and three children were killed on October 17 when Israeli tank fire struck their minibus, according to NorthJersey.com. The attack occurred a week after the ceasefire took effect.

Despite the “ceasefire,” innocent Palestinians continue to be killed. Sami from Franklin Township has lost 48 members of his family.

The U.S. needs to uphold its commitment to enforce the ceasefire.https://t.co/FMH9x4H0wZ

— Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (@RepBonnie) October 27, 2025

Local activists published video on social media, verified by Al Jazeera, documenting the search operations for the bodies of Israeli captives.

According to activists, the recovery effort took place inside the home of the Jamal family in Nuseirat camp, central Gaza.

An Egyptian team arrived at the site earlier to aid in the search for the captives’ remains.

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Translation: Search operations are currently under way for the bodies of Israeli captives inside the al-Jamal family home in the Nuseirat refugee camp. This is the home where the “Arnon” operation to free the captives was carried out on June 9, 2024, resulting in the deaths of a number of abductees. The Egyptian team, which arrived at the site today, is participating in the search.

Sam Rose, acting director of UNRWA in Gaza, says no other organisation has the capacity or experience to “take on the load” required in delivering essential services to war-ravaged Gaza.

Rose said 23,000 Palestinian children have returned to school since the Israel-Hamas ceasefire started three weeks ago.

“It is very critical to them, the children, a sense of normality, but also to give their parents and their communities a sense that life is getting back to normal,” he told Al Jazeera.

“That reality for children in Gaza is not going to shopping malls with their parents, but its living in tents and scrambling for water, and there has to be some way to factor that in.”

At least 381 United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) staff have been killed since October 2023 – making it the deadliest conflict for UN personnel on record, according to the agency’s latest report.

The figure includes 309 UNRWA employees and 72 people supporting the agency’s operations as of October 26.

The UN agency also documented 942 attacks on its facilities throughout the war, with 849 people killed while taking shelter in UNRWA buildings.